Our Story

It started with a drive to Nonna's

Santo moved his family to the Adelaide Hills and quickly noticed something. Every trip along the winding roads to drop the kids at their nonna's (grandma's), he'd pass stall after stall — honesty boxes brimming with eggs, tables stacked with seasonal fruit, hand-painted signs leaning against fence posts. A dozen of them, easy. And every single time, he'd tell himself he'd stop on the way back.

He never did. Because by the time he was heading home, he couldn't remember where they were. Or whether that stall with the avocados was on Longwood Road or somewhere else entirely. Or if they even had anything left.

But it wasn't just the stalls he could see that bothered him. It was the ones he couldn't.

Living on acreage, Santo got to know his community. Neighbours with citrus trees dropping more fruit than a family of six could eat. People with chickens producing far more eggs than they'd ever get through. Hobby growers pulling beautiful produce out of their gardens with no one to give it to. They'd mention it in passing — "We've got bags of lemons if you want some" — but it never went further than that.

He'd ask them: Why not set up a little stall? Put the word out?

The answers were always the same.

"We don't live on a main road. No one would see it."

"I looked at Facebook Marketplace, but I don't want strangers knowing my name and where I live."

"I'm not putting my address on the internet so someone can come scam me."

Good food. Willing sellers. No way to connect them to the people who'd happily buy it — especially right now, when the cost of groceries is making everyone feel the pinch.

Meanwhile, the produce would rot. Or get thrown in the compost. Or quietly pile up on a neighbour's doorstep because that was the only distribution network anyone had.

Santo knew someone needed to fix this. He just didn't know it would be him.

Then came a bowl of Rice Noodles

Santo was catching up with his mate Vong — a software engineer with a talent for building things from scratch. Over lunch, Santo started talking about the stalls, the waste, the neighbours who wanted to sell but couldn't. Vong put his chopsticks down.

He had his own version of the same frustration.

Vong loved buying from real people — not fluorescent-lit supermarket aisles, not corporations, just roadside stalls, backyard growers, food trucks — but actually finding them was a nightmare. He'd spend twenty minutes scrolling through Instagram stories and Facebook posts trying to figure out where a food truck had parked that day. Half the time, he'd give up. And that was just the vendors with a social media presence — the ones without were completely invisible.

"There's literally no way to just open your phone and see what's near you right now."

That conversation didn't end with lunch. It ended with a decision.

Vong would build it. Santo would fill it. Together, they'd create the thing that should have existed already.